Where were you the day the world ended?
by Orries A Writer
Summary: PROMPT FIC: AU- The avengers couldn't hold the city. The nuke explodes and New York, cut off from the rest of the world, falls under Loki/Chitauri rule. Part of a collection of Fictions based off of the title 'Where were you the day the world ended' Multiple Major Character Deaths, Maybe?Slash. Amarda of ships.
1. Prologue

"_I will not order a nuclear strike on a civilian population!"_

"_Director Fury is no longer in control..."_

* * *

**Steve: **

I can still remember seeing that missile fly overhead. Still recall trying to make a move towards it when we were being evacuated.. The Hulk had tried too. There was no denying that. Absorb gamma radiation once makes you confident you can do it again.

Loki is the king now, they tell me so as I dig around in the black ash and mud for my shield. "Not my king." I mutter, every syllable holding back the urge to punch something.

We were clear of the blast zone when the nuke was first launched. Three minutes to save as many as we could, or live to fight another day. Begrudgingly I listened to the rest of the team, and live to fight another day. We know Hulk.. Or maybe Bruce by now? He's out there somewhere in the midst of the Chutari fleets. We don't know if he's safe, or even if he's alive. Tony reassures me that he can hear the fellow avenger roar in the night, but I've never heard him when it's been my turn to keep watch. We sleep in shifts, and it's like the war I never saw won.

**Natasha:**

Date: unknown.

Days since fallout: Estimated 5 weeks.

Team status: Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson. Accounted for. Bruce Banner, Nick Fury, Clint Barton... Status unknown.

Current safe-house: Manhattan. Underground Subway maintenance shaft 15. Distance to next safe-house: Two hour walk from most recent safe-house. Tracks no longer safe. Scouts are not yet looking for us, but they are aware there are rebels down here. It is not just the avengers who took to the underground.

Stark and I have no ammo left. Heavily reliant on Steve and Thor. Both tire quicker than usual now. My training never covered this. I have taught Tony close quarters combat, it's all I can do to keep him sharp and focused. None here will admit it, but we lost this battle the moment we lost the tower. Stark insists we continue towards his lab, but I fear I may peel away from this group, and try to find another way. There is little in terms of options. The next food run will be my turn. I will not abandon this group, but the chance to run is there.

**Tony:**

Don't get me started. The point is we still have JARVIS. He's the lifeline, the heartbeat, and the soul of this suit. I refuse to power down, in case I lose the connection. I refuse to lose Jarvis. I've been told... Too many times now, that I should conserve my energy, and they're right. Today I had to hook my personal arc to the suit, I'm on emergency power, and time. There's other reactors, and I'm going to get them one way or the other. Loki is the type to bargain, so long as he's gambling entertainment. As king he must be bored, and I want to abuse that. Steve holds me down at times, tells me not to be a hero right now. I'm not interested any more. I don't want to hear it. We've been moving constantly, and I'm surprised we even have the strength left to fight the occasional baddie. I did manage to get in contact with someone today... But I don't think the rest of the team will be happy about it. Hope Steve likes the colour red. He's going to be seeing a lot of it.

**Bruce/Hulk:**

I thought I was paranoid before, but this is keeping me on edge constantly. I no longer care about the will I so painfully instilled into myself. Right now the less I stay me, the better. Hulk only lets me back when it's safe, or when there's really no other choice. I've been running around the outskirts for a while, and the acid flashbacks of my time inside the Hulk are... Disturbing, to put it nicely. When I'm me, I help anyone I can get away from the patrolling Chutari, and it seems Hulk has a penchant for riding around on the squadrons. I'd find it amusing if this wasn't the end of the life we all once knew. I don't know why they haven't sent in more nukes, why they haven't obliterated everything to dust. I speculate it could be that Loki has the Tesseract, and is using it to keep the city as his. I've never wanted to mutate to have eyes in the back of my head, but when I come around again, I'm ten miles in the opposite direction I'd been running.

Puny man tells Hulk that Puny God is to blame.

Pain from all direction. Hulk cries out for help. Nobody comes to help Hulk.

Running on the roof is easier way. Flying is good too.

Metal man not here to have fun with Hulk, he smash good like Hulk too.

Hulk find Bird man. Bird man not move. Hulk not sure how to help little man.

Opening my eyes to find Clint face down in the mud, drove me to fear and need to run away. Did I do this? Wasn't it bad enough that there was hell around me, that I too had to cause hell? My hands tentatively hold him, turn his face to wipe it clean of the sludge and radioactive waste. If he hadn't died by my hand, nor by bullet, then his mouth full of hazardous waste was sure to do it. Perhaps he couldn't go another step? Poor Barton... Poor Natasha.

For once I thank that there's calm, that there's peace so I can mourn him. There's nowhere to bury him, nowhere with grass, nowhere with flowers. I pull him out of the mud, it's the least I can do. How did Hulk find him? Was there an affinity to the team that I couldn't tell, and the monster could? I drag Clint from the street, and hole up in a broken down warehouse, the very same I'd fallen into the first day of the attack. I leave Clint there, and concentrate every last thought before I change. 'Find Tony. Find Natasha. Find Steve. Find Thor. Find them please... Please. Hulk...'

'Please find them.'


	2. Ally? Unlikely

I was trying to keep the chapters short. I really was! I know that a lot of people didn't bother to go see Captain America, which is why this chapter may have some really obvious 'this is what happened' references. I'm covering all my bases.

Enjoy!

* * *

"There are seriously more things to worry about right now." Tony looked frantically from Steve's expression to the rest of the team. Everyone was usually tense, nobody had relaxed since they fled underground. But this may have been Tony's Stark's defining mistake.

"No! This is not happening." Steve looks like he wants to round on Tony, probably to hit him or shout him down. But he's rooted to the spot, bright blues ablaze as they dare not tear away from the unfriendly dark pair opposite him.

"Calm down, Steven." The thick German accent that Steve recalled, still there, more violent than ever as it sounded out the Captain's full name.

Johann Schmidt.

His nemesis.

This man was the reason Captain America ever came about. The full circle of consequence. From the serum, to the cube, to the frozen plane in the middle of the Arctic.

Steve rounds on the red face in front of him, the disgusting disfigured skull that had burned into his memory since the first day they met. All those years of pent up anger and stress and _hate_. Nobody on the team had ever seen this side of their leader, and nobody ever wanted to again from the way he was barrelling so quickly out of control. Steve is snarling he's so upset, and he intentionally flexes every one of his gifted muscles. "Shut up. I don't know you came back to life but-"

Schmidt sneers his laughter, his hellish expression cruel as he cuts the spangled man off mid-sentence. "I never died. What an odd assumption." Those eyes without skin, bug-wide, yet still able to look narrowed with the question that followed. "Did you never learn the cube's true power?" He seemed so smug, yet he was in the same boat now. He was in the middle of nuclear fallout just like the good guys.

Tony jumps in on this, his suit probably the only thing making him feel brave enough to do so. "We learned." He says stiffly, and puts a hand out to each man, as though he were the referee to a death match he regretted setting up. "You know what it does, we know what it does. Can you get it back safely or not?" He asks, and the Skull's eyes linger for a moment on the man.

"Where have I seen you before?" He asks. Then he looks back to Steve and laughs a hollow, triumphant bark. "You must be the inventor's son! That fool wasn't close to my technology in the slightest, and you think that you are, boy?"

"Leave him out of this." Steve says, defending both Howard and Tony at the same time.

"But my dear Captain." He says with insincerity. "It was this 'Iron Man' whom invited me." The smug grin on his face was cut short as Steve lunged, and the two of them exchange blows that would kill a normal man on impact.

Skull bleeds, so does Cap. The both of them are panting, going toe-to-toe in a feral collide of power. Thor steps in, grabbing Johann away just as Tony manages to push Steve back with as much of his reserved strength as he can. Skull calms almost immediately, the smile on his face toothy. "What does he mean?" Steve is screaming at Tony, and the suit clad man has to really push. Eventually Thor comes over to still the smaller blonde.

"Ease, Patriot." He encourages, but Steve is still like a wild animal.

"How did you even get here?" He yells, and Skull takes a seat on a rather old looking desk chair. The security booth of the subway station was shattered, but the team had agreed to rest there for the time.

It was only when they woke up to Steve's scream of fright that they realized something about man with the red skull in front of them was not just a human mutation from the radiation. Stranger things had happened after all.

Slowly, Schmidt gets comfortable, and checks the back of his gloves for damage. He knew he'd managed to split his knuckles underneath the black leather when he'd collided with Steve's open mouth. He could still feel where the man had bit down. "Imagine my delight when I found myself in a broken New York." He starts simply, and Steve is still shaking from the adrenaline.

The blonde solider had stopped this plan of Skull's to bomb New York 70 years ago, but he'd never thought that America would do this to itself. The lines of good and evil were solid back when it was Steve stopping Johann. But now, he didn't know who his enemy was. He snaps his attention back to Skull's monologue in time to catch the highlights.

"Iron Man here found me walking around. Told me he knew who I was from his father's files." Skull stands and the leather of his coat still smells new. It was as though the man had been in suspended animation too, but Steve had stopped listening by that point to find out where he'd come from. Something about space. To Steve, everything bad may as well come from space. "So I agreed. I will help you get back the cube, because we are proving to the Gods that we are the Great Ones who rule this planet."

Thor tenses at that, and his hammer shifts as he readies his weight. "Not you." Schmidt appears to roll his eyes, and his voice is venomous in the echo of the station. "I too am like a God." He sneers, and that earns him a bellowed laugh from Thor.

"What mortal deludes himself?" He asks, and his voice is quietly threatening. Steve is the one who stays at Thor's side this time.

"Calm down... He's just asking for another round. If we kill him, we won't be able to rebuild the portal for the cube." He says, and his own fist clenches, the squeak of his glove protesting indicated that he was just as upset as Thor. "He thought he'd become a God when he used the serum. He can keep on dreaming." Steve's the one who looks smug now, and Thor nods as he puts his hammer down on the floor. Nobody was going to waste strength trying to pick it up.

"As I was saying." Skull hisses his displeasure at the two judging him. "I will be able to get the cube, but I've been told getting towards the 'Tower' is not easy." He looks to Tony, and the man nods stiffly to agree. "So, Captain... _We_ are going to have to devise a strategy, together."

"No." Steve points at Schmidt. "I'd rather die." He growls.

"Very well." Skull is moving before anyone has chance to figure out what happened. The man has both his hands around Steve's neck, and is laughing as Steve punches as his body hovers over him. The two had fallen down and wrestled into the tracks of the station, and Steve was battling for air. "You do not want to work with me, and I do not care if you live another second." He says as he watches Steve lose breath. "You ruined my plans the first time. You will not do it again!"

Tony, Thor and Natasha pull Skull away, and all it takes is a well placed fist from Thor's Godly power, and the skull is down on his knees wheezing for the same breath that Steve was now gasping back into his lungs.

"I'll never let you, Skull!" Steve rasps, and bats at Tony uselessly as the man tries to help him stand. "And," he adds as he gasp in a more steady breath, "I will never forgive you for this." He speaks to Tony, talking to the gold helmet that had snapped over the human face in the conflict.

"I know that." The radio calm of Tony's voice replies. "But this is all we've got. I've run the maths almost a hundred different ways. 96 ways, actually. We need to take back our home." He explains, and Thor is in agreement.

"It is time I face my brother again." He says with a sombre expression. "I shall go to him." He summons his hammer from the ground, narrowly missing Schmidt in the process.

"No, we need you here." Natasha speaks up for the first time in days. She'd been doing a lot of things, but speaking hadn't been a part of that unless it was a direct question. She'd been too busy worrying and planning to hear what people were saying around her. "We'd have told you to go if there was a way we could get by without you." She says, and for once Steve and Tony chime in with the same thoughts.

Odin's son takes his time contemplating this, and finally gives in. "But we cannot linger." He states.


	3. Seperated Reunion

**The Day of the Explosion**

_"Stark there's a nuke headed your way. E.T.A. three minutes."_

"I'm going, I'm going!" Tony yells, flying as fast as his substituted suit would allow. This one had been designed for ambush fights, much like the one he'd had with Loki. It was not designed to be as fast as the MK-VII, nor as powerful and ready to fight this many enemies as the War Machine suit he gifted to Rhodey.

In short, Tony Stark was not equipped to deal with this.

They'd shut the portal down too early. There was no time for Tony to interrupt them and tell them about the nuke. The news came on the intercoms seconds too late.

"Get out of here. All of you evacuate." Tony screams into the comms, and the team spend too long arguing about the rate of survival. Tony knew the rate, and that's why he didn't want to listen to them fighting. "Two minutes to decide if you want to fight another day." He growls, and that boosts the team into grouping.

A warning siren. The type Tony had only ever heard in disaster movies. The wash over effect on him that the one long sound had. Deafening noise.

The warning of a nuclear attack.

Pure panic flooded him.

Tony estimated that 8.2 million people panicked in the same instant. Roughly half of that would be killed in the blast. The rest... The rest would would die of exposure as far out as Paterson if they were lucky it didn't spread too far. But so would the team if they didn't get a fucking move on. "Get to the subway, go as far into the tunnels as you can." He instructs. He wasn't sure if it would save them, but it would be a better shot than waiting for the bomb to hit to find out. There had to be enough concrete and metal between them. There just _had_ to be.

People, aliens, Gods, and Avengers all ran for their lives. It was a mass swarm of bodies. Nobody knew how many probably died in the crush and ground swell. Human beings were capable of blocking out that sort of thought process when they were fearing for their lives.

The Avengers took it upon themselves to tell anyone close enough to make a beeline for the subway, and in that time, Tony had flown to catch up to the nuke. What he was going to do with it... Well, it was a play by ear situation.

The Hulk had taken to climbing buildings, and had watched as his metal friend flew after a large dangerous looking 'thing' that was much faster. Hulk started to run across the tops of the buildings, and had found the exact place to intercept it. People could say a lot of things about the Hulk, but it turns out the enormous green rage monster knew a thing or two about saving innocent people. He roars for Tony to fly away, and that "Hulk can reduce impact."

To this very day Tony had no idea what that meant.

In the aftermath he'd asked the others about it, and the closest they'd come to understanding was Natasha telling them that Bruce had jokingly offered to eat the Tesseract. But Tony doubted that even _the _Hulk could eat a nuke.

In the confusion and chaos, Clint had been separated. Every person he bumped into and guided towards the subway, pushed him further away from his team. Natasha had frantically shouted him repeatedly, but the archer was nowhere in sight.

The last person to see him living was Tony, who flew overhead, and had failed to see the bow and quiver strapped to the man from a birds-eye view. Everyone was just a mop of hair to Tony, brown, red, blonde, dyed. There was no differentiation from that high up at that speed.

* * *

_"The nuke's coming in hot!"_

Clint had no time after that, he knew that meant he had maybe 50 seconds if he was fortunate. He sped toward an apartment block, and slammed into the basement complex. He pushed everything he could find against the small, gutter sized window, then ran as fast as he could to the opposite side of the room. He laughed and thanked God as he found sandbags, knowing that the owner of this home must've been ready for a flood or something. He grabs them and the fire blanket that was hung up in the tiny kitchen then he locks himself in the bathroom.

It was a cramped space with no natural light, only enough space to get your foot out of the tub and into the toilet. He dumps the bags against the door. It wasn't much, but it would prolong his life against the initial blast and flesh melting exposure of the radiation in the 24 hours after that.

He barely has time to shake the fire blanket loose and wrap it around himself as the nuke hits, and he falls back into the tub from the surrounding vibration. The shaking of the room and dust that fell free from the ceiling was the only sign that the rest of the apartment building had no doubt been destroyed into mere rubble and masses of broken bricks.

The sound ruptured Clint's ears, and he couldn't move for hours. His equilibrium was gone, and every time he tried to move, his head pounded with the rushing white-out pain. He groaned pitifully and lay curled in the bathtub, probably for days from what his body was telling him.

When he could finally move, the first thing he had to do was use the bathroom for all it was. He hoped nobody would ever find out that he didn't flush, and that his beard hair was probably going to stay in that sink until they replaced it in the rebuild.

He'd felt so overjoyed that he'd made it, and that he hadn't started to bleed out of every orifice from the aftermath of gamma. His brain incessantly nagged him to try his earpiece to contact the team. But he'd started talking aloud to try and hear himself. He was deafened and the sound wasn't coming back. All he could do was remind himself to stay alert. He had other senses to rely on.

He could smell burning though, that worried him the most. If he opened the bathroom door and it turned out there was nothing but flames? Well.. He wasn't sure the fire blanket would get him far. He didn't know if the room beyond this one was accessible, or if he'd be able to get out at all.

* * *

**The Present Day, Approx. 5 weeks later.**

The quarrelling had died down into uneasy silence. Steve kept his eyes trained on Schmidt, and in turn the Skull smiled and looked at the bruises he'd left around Steve's neck. They were pretty to the HYDRA leader, beautiful stripes of purple and black art against a pale skin above the royal blue of his uniform. They suited Erskine's _lap-dog_.

Tony had finally taken his helmet back off, but had refused to continue with his plan with all the tension that was in the room. He was sure he'd be able to grab it from the air and feed on it, the taste of it from the sidelines was that strong. "Why do you have lips and not eyelids?" He asks out of the blue as he studies the face of the red skull. Natasha laughs quietly, and Thor joins in although he stops soon after.

"Tin-man, is that not rude?"

"It's just weird!" He says, and Skull snorts more distaste. "Can you even tell what things taste like? No nose right?" Tony feels triumphant as Steve twitches a little smile, one that made him feel like he wasn't in Steve's bad books again.

"Hey Thor, did you hear the one about the rival with no nose?"

"How did he smell?" Natasha asks, because of course she knew this joke. She knew everything.

"Terrible." Tony says, and Thor laughs as he's never heard it before. The laughter is a contagion, because Tony's smiling, Natasha plays it up with a girlish giggle, and Steve finds himself genuinely beaming at the expression of hatred on Skull's face. At this Tony shrugs his shoulders and gives an insincere apology. "Sorry, just because you're helping out doesn't mean we have to be nice to you."

"Not at all." Skull says in one of the most polite dismissals he can manage. "But understand that you will be the next to fall."

"Look forward to it." Tony replies, and the tension is eased. "Until then we want you to-"

Their conversation is cut short as they hear a roar loud enough to put a tremor of fear in Skull's eyes. "What... Is that?" He asks, both awed and intrigued by the fact that the Avengers around him aren't scared in the slightest.

"Bruce!" Tony says with a schoolboy giddiness. "I told you so!" He says and makes his way towards the tunnel, peering into the darkness that the Hulk was no doubt lumbering around in.

The others gather around and call softly, "Hulk? ... Hulk?" leaving Schmidt to wonder who exactly 'Bruce and Hulk' were and how the others could tell it was those two.

Johann looks on as the group circle around a man who appears out of the tunnel, barely managing to stay out of the arms of his comrades. Hobbling, broken, tiny. What man of his size could make a noise that big? He looks to the black tunnel, expecting another. But nothing else came, and nobody else appeared to be waiting for the mystery Hulk.

"I'm so sorry." Bruce whimpers, clutching tightly at the ripped up pants he had sagging from his middle. "Natasha." He looks to her, tears already in his eyes. "Clint's gone."

* * *

So I'm hoping this prompt is entertaining you. I didn't want to ask, but could you please review? I want to make sure I'm pushing this story in the right direction.


	4. Underground Surface

A few days passed with the Avengers and pockets of civilians stuck under the city. With no judgement of time with the lack of natural light, it was easy to get lost in the sensation of a weightless existence, trying to conspire against the new overlord: Loki. But time had run out for Tony, and it was with the first shooting pain that he awoke from resting in his suit, trying to clutch at his chest, encased in red and gold.

Natasha, who had been nestled against Bruce for the past 36 hours hiding her grief, startled awake, sensing the distress more than hearing it. With nimble steps she got to Tony, and knew what was happening from their previous encounter before this mess. The woman managed to get a few words from Stark, but their urgent conversation was not unheard. It awoke Thor, then that jolted Steve from his death gaze with Skull, the two having staved off sleep in favour of silently sizing each other up.

"Then we wait no more." Thor declares, taking over as leader for the time. "We must cure our friend of his sickness."

"It's not really a sickness," Tony pipes up, moving slower, more cautiously now. "But we need to fight and we're out of options, it's time to drag Loki out of my house." He growls, but his face pales as another sharp slice hit him from somewhere dangerously close to his beating muscle.

"Then I shall go, I shall stop him." Thor declares. "Much as your commander asked, I cannot allow Loki to claim this land. He will be dealt with."

"You're not going alone." Steve says, standing to aid the hammer wielding hero. "You need someone to watch your back."

"But, Iron man needs you." Bruce interrupts, his plan already formulated. "I'll stay here and help Tony siphon as much power from his suits' arc back into him, Natasha can go and get his spare reactors, which leaves you to keep an eye on your Red Friend."

"Not a chance you will get into the tower." Schmidt speaks with cruel clarity. "It is protected by the very portal created by the cosmic cube."

All attention, not for the first time, was on the pair of hollow socketed eyes. "You need to penetrate the defences before you can even think to get inside the tower you want." He sneers, knowing now he had a bargaining chip.

"The HYDRA weapons..." Steve replies, understanding the plan immediately. "That's why you wanted the cube."

"Not so much my weapons any more. More like, your new ruler's.. But yes. It was a means to an end, but you were always getting in my way-"

"Ladies." Natasha snaps, earning her two dangerous looks. "Make your point, and your plea." She declares toward the evil of the two. Skull looks as though he'd been slapped, which was satisfying enough for Steve to stand down.

"Once I show you how to utilise the cube, you grant me another passage with it." The German demands, and there's really nothing but their words binding them in agreement.

"Done. Now hurry up." Tony cuts in without there being time to deliberate, his breath coming short.

The beat of stunned silence was enough to get Skull to play his leverage. "I am going with Rogers. We have something to finish."

Steve tenses, hoists his shield up, and nods. The three men leave, giving Bruce access to Tony's suit, and Natasha a job of finding the closest thing to a tool box she can scavenge.

Stepping out on to the surface of what used to be New York City was what the weaker accustomed person would call an apocalypse. Steve Rogers called it the aftermath of a second D-Day, Thor called it the prelude battle ground to the oncoming Ragnarok of his destiny. A man like Skull, called it his new home.

Whilst Schmidt spent his time idling his pace to take in the devastation of the 'new' world, Steve kept looking ahead trying to ignore the _crunch_ decay of obliterated ashen bones underfoot. Thor too tread as carefully and respectful as he could, but the blackening crust around his shoes was of both human and alien matter. There was no point in trying to give the dead peace as their remains rose like dirty snowflakes; trying to return to the sky only to fall again resettling in the large footprints left behind by the two blonde fighters.

"Hold on.." Steve stops the trio, and Schmidt looks to the skyline, the rooftops in particular. "This is a trap."

"Certainly. Much as I had tried to shoot you down Herr Captain, there are adequate places to take a snipers nest."

"Something we could have protected from-" Thor starts, but Steve doesn't let him talk for Clint. There was no place for grief in the midst of a war.

"Save it for later. Use the lightning, fry 'em." Steve's face was hard set, an expression that had not left him since he woke up. Thor nods solemnly, and then whilst Steve hid under his shield, Thor set the entire place ablaze with crackles of lightning, bolts that penetrated any conducting metal it could, thunder that roared the victory as bodies began to fall from their hiding places. Steve's arm was burnt from the hum and heat the bolts had forced through the vibranium; vibration resistant sure, but a force of nature was still a force that could not be held by the time limited engineering of Howard Stark.

Schmidt took a brunt of hurt, which in both the blonde's opinions was not a bad thing at all. Although wounded, the Red Skull rose from the grey ash, dusting himself off with a cough and a ginger pat. His body was torched, but other than the blistering and the unique white scatter of scars that covered his face; Skull appeared no worse off than five minutes before.

"Interesting.." He exclaims as though he was about to slice his own skin to see what made him tick. The group pushes on, Schmidt considerably falling behind. For all the pain, and suffering, and hell that Johann unleashed, Steve still went back, still pushed the other on.

"Don't get cosy." He grunts, the warning laced with the thicker lilt of his Brooklyn accent. "Soon as we're done here, I'm sending you back to Germany in a matchbox."

"Tough words Captain." His enemy replied, knowing this weakness could be exposed into his advantage.

"Tough luck you ran into me." Steve growls back. There was something to Steve, maybe in the serum they shared, that made him both repel from Skull's smile and desire to learn the man inside out: to predict his enemy's predictions.

"Yes, but luck is not a factor in our lives. Only probability and the right application of foresight would bind us like this." Schmidt muses aloud, every word making Steve want to tell him he was wrong. But whilst Steve had used the serum for his physical gain, he was years away from Schmidt's already high intelligence. The man had been a scientist long before his dose, and had long since had time to learn and grow. Unfortunately that was to root deeper into the darkness that consumed him with hate; plotting his domination, his great war and world without flags. It occurred then to Steve that Schmidt getting within even a sniffing distance of Loki would be a fatal mistake. Steve drops the Red Skull abruptly and drags Thor by the arm, his grip strong enough to make his point, but barely enough to force the other should he plant his feet.

"Skull wants this." Steve mutters, low to not be heard. "He knows what Loki wants, or is trying to get... He claimed years ago he wanted a world without freedom too." He sneaks a glance at Skull just about able to pick himself up, his face slowly healing into the monstrous normality he fashioned.

"Then what of him?" Thor asks, making Steve grumble.

"Leave him. We walk, by the time I get to the arc reactor, he'll have caught up. That's time enough to be sure he doesn't see Loki, or any of Stark's technology."

"I agree, the desires of good are easily corrupted to the nature of an evil ploy."

"And Skull's smart enough to figure out Tony's equations before I know what I'm looking at."

"Then with haste..." Thor sets off, and Steve finds a purpose, another reason to walk forward. This pitiful band of rebels would soon have one of it's strongest batters up, and Loki would know what it was like to be the ant beneath the boot. After that SHIELD would have so much to answer for that the world would need to shift its entire views. Steve knew he could help there, that his career was not going to end at the hands of a manic alien Demi-God.


End file.
